Knowing Everything

There has always been a somatic tradition of the pursuit of the laws of nature. There was more than just a single top down control perspective. The vital somatic tradition has always taken to heart that sacred sense of identity that is only found in the whole, the whole that is greater the sum of its parts. Complex living organisms have a sense of identity. This is expressed in their behavior and function and it is important not to lose sight of this greater unifying perspective. It is a form of awareness seated in our own sense of self as a whole greater than the sum of our own parts. This recognition is inherent to our pursuit to understand complex living systems.

One of the problems of modern civilization is that we assume that with our science and reason and technology we either already know everything or can figure it out. One of the problems of modern civilization is that in order to develop this form of analytical reason we had to choose a path that was objectifying and reductionist. This was never the only way of knowing—one among many. In order to develop Reason as a civilization we made it part of the social code that science, analytical reasoning, logic, observable evidence, and the intellect were the only true form of knowing. Because of this bias we have made tremendous but very imbalanced technological progress. This required very real sacrifices, including the denuding of the earth, animals and our own body of much of their meaning. There is another line of inquiry that is complementary and includes the complementary, wholistic and integrative base code. But we have forgotten that there are other ways of knowing and other traditions of science or what we can think of as the more ancient pursuit of natural philosophy.

Vesalius published his Fabrica, the first modern anatomical text, in the same year as Copernicus published Revolutionibus, a mathematical text. The somatic tradition was never overshadowed until the mathematicization of Western history made its major breakthroughs. it continues to thrive today in as far as the life impulse of the earth and our own bodies continues to thrive. But it has been badly bullied and denigrated.

The somatic tradition is understandably late in coming to it fulfillment. Our is a profoundly more difficult and complex subject matter. Moreover we do not merely know it from the outside in. It isn’t a matter of memorization. It is experiential and takes real time and physical effort.

The rediscovery of fascia, our connective tissue matrix and, like an inner skin, our organ of interoception, or inner awareness, is the impetus for the grand somatic breakthrough. By including the fascia, the synergistic anatomy of our inner self that we so desperately need to understand is now clear, logical, and recognizable.

It can be named and owned. We each name and own our own bodies, but we all share the same skeletal anatomy.

Learn about the deep core, the body’s primal axial line, the interoceptive sensory motor system, our postural core and animal intelligence. The deep core is a body wide myofacial synergy that runs down the front of the spine from the tongue to the big toe. It is the center of our postal and coordinative motor system and includes the most profoundly complex and sensitive parts of the body. It is our axial line but has a kind of preverbal self awareness or animal intelligence. It is deeply integrated and is self directed, self balancing, and even self healing. it has a mind of its own that we do well to listen to, because it is us and it has what we are missing.

What is interoception?

Exteroception involves the five conventional senses of the body: sight, taste, touch, and smell and sound. This is how we know the world around us and ourselves from the outside in. Our external skin is the membrane by which we perceive the world around us and know ourselves from the outside in. It tells us our size and shape and tone and position as well as our color and age and temperature.

Exteroception is how we provide evidence for all the claims of science and reason. It is how we know ourselves and we define the nature of reality around this form of perception.

Interoception in contrast refer to the sensory organs of our inner self. These organs are various and complex and include pain, position, stretch, vibration, temperature, thirst and hunger. There are many other forms of sincere organs including chemoreceptors. But our primary means of self-awareness is the sensory motor system. This system is our postural core and is located along the axial line of the body. This is chiefly the anterior area of the spine but continues through the pelvis and the inside legs to the big toe on the ground. It is an ecological system in every regard, including the sensory motor system.

Because this system is a single bodywide continuity composed of tremendously complex systems of yet further systems, it has a level of awareness of the whole. Even though this awareness is right hemispheric and preverbal it nonetheless contains a tremendous amount of important information and energy. when we are informed by it we have far greater resources for adaptive responses to our current predicament.

We may finally accomplish a theory of everything but it will only be applicable to an intellectual, top down control and objectifying relationship with the world.

It will never know what it is like when we start from within.